{"id":13837,"date":"2014-11-13T11:58:50","date_gmt":"2014-11-13T16:58:50","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2024-04-14T03:20:56","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T08:20:56","slug":"obama-job-rating-flat-after-midterm-losses-unlike-bush-ike-truman","status":"publish","type":"short-read","link":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2014\/11\/13\/obama-job-rating-flat-after-midterm-losses-unlike-bush-ike-truman\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama job rating flat after midterm losses, unlike Bush, Ike, Truman"},"content":{"rendered":"

The midterm elections that handed losses to many Democrats across the country haven\u2019t resulted in much change for President Obama\u2019s approval rating \u2013 it has barely moved in over a year and remains at 43%.<\/p>\n\n

\"FT_two-term-president-ratings\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n

In fact, the share of Americans approving of Obama has wavered between 41% and 45% in 13 consecutive Pew Research surveys dating back to September 2013<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

While Obama\u2019s recent job approval isn\u2019t high by historical standards, his second-term numbers overall have been more stable than those of his predecessors. Although many factors contribute to a president\u2019s approval in the public\u2019s eye, it often declines after an election when a president\u2019s party loses.<\/p>\n\n

George W. Bush\u2019s rating, for instance, dropped consistently after his 2004 reelection, including five points after his second midterm election in 2006 (to 32%), when Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress. Ronald Reagan, who entered the 1986 elections with a 63% approval rating, dropped 16 points by December \u2014 largely due to the damage done by the Iran-Contra affair<\/a>, which came to light in November 1986. Like Obama, Reagan\u2019s party gave up the Senate and lost seats in the House.<\/p>\n\n

\"FT_obama-approval-steady\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n

Dwight Eisenhower\u2019s job approval rating fell 5 points (57%-52%) in November 1958, according to Gallup<\/a>, after a disastrous midterm for the GOP. Harry Truman\u2019s rating declined 8 points (41%-33%) post-election in 1950, when Democrats barely held control of both houses.<\/p>\n\n

One president who fared well after his second midterm was Bill Clinton, whose approval rating hit 65% as his party gained<\/em> House seats in his second midterm election (the only time this occurred in the 20th century).<\/p>\n\n

Over the entirety of a president\u2019s second term, recent history shows that approval ratings vary widely. In the wake of the Iran-Contra affair, Reagan\u2019s Gallup approval hovered around 50%, but he rebounded and left office with 63% support. Clinton dropped from a high of 71% around his early-1999 impeachment to 55%, but he left office with about six-in-ten approving of his job (61%). Bush continued to struggle in the homestretch of his presidency, finishing with the approval of about one-in-four Americans (24%).<\/p>\n\n

Despite Obama\u2019s flat approval trend recently, most of the public was skeptical<\/a> in Pew Research\u2019s post-election survey last weekend that the president can accomplish a great deal (6%) or some (33%) of what he would like to do in his final two years. About six-in-ten (59%) think he will accomplish not much or nothing of what he wants to get done, similar to the sentiment eight years ago as Bush faced his lame duck status.<\/p>\n\n

The public is divided, though, about who should take the lead in solving the country\u2019s problems: 40% say Obama and 41% choose Republican congressional leaders. By contrast, 51% wanted Democratic leaders in Congress to take the lead after the 2006 midterms and just 29% thought Bush should do so.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Obama\u2019s approval rating has barely moved in over a year and remains at 43%. In fact, the share of Americans approving of Obama has wavered between 41% and 45% in 13 consecutive Pew Research surveys dating back to September 2013.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"sub_headline":null,"sub_title":"","_prc_public_revisions":[],"_ppp_expiration_hours":0,"_ppp_enabled":false,"ai_generated_summary":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"relatedPosts":[],"datacite_doi":"","datacite_doi_citation":"","_prc_seo_qr_attachment_id":0,"spoken_article_player_enabled":true,"displayBylines":true,"footnotes":"","prc_watchers":[],"_prc_fork_parent":0,"_prc_fork_status":"","_prc_active_fork":0},"categories":[75,43,67],"bylines":[754],"collection":[],"datasets":[],"_post_visibility":[],"formats":[467],"_fund_pool":[],"languages":[],"regions-countries":[515],"research-teams":[520],"workflow-status":[],"class_list":["post-13837","short-read","type-short-read","status-publish","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-election-2014","category-presidential-approval","bylines-seth-motel","formats-short-read","regions-countries-united-states","research-teams-politics"],"label":"Short Read","post_parent":0,"word_count":455,"canonical_url":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2014\/11\/13\/obama-job-rating-flat-after-midterm-losses-unlike-bush-ike-truman\/","art_direction":{"A1":{"id":25830,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-13-at-11.15.32-AM.png","url":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-13-at-11.15.32-AM.png?w=305&h=317&crop=1","width":305,"height":317,"chartArt":false},"A2":{"id":25830,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-13-at-11.15.32-AM.png","url":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-13-at-11.15.32-AM.png?w=268&h=151&crop=1","width":268,"height":151,"chartArt":false},"A3":{"id":25830,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-13-at-11.15.32-AM.png","url":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-13-at-11.15.32-AM.png?w=194&h=110&crop=1","width":194,"height":110,"chartArt":false},"A4":{"id":25830,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-13-at-11.15.32-AM.png","url":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-13-at-11.15.32-AM.png?w=268&h=151&crop=1","width":268,"height":151,"chartArt":false},"XL":{"id":25830,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-13-at-11.15.32-AM.png","url":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-13-at-11.15.32-AM.png?w=305&h=405&crop=1","width":305,"height":405,"chartArt":false},"social":{"id":25830,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-13-at-11.15.32-AM.png","url":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-13-at-11.15.32-AM.png?w=305&h=439&crop=1","width":305,"height":439,"chartArt":false}},"_embeds":[],"watchers":[],"table_of_contents":[],"datacite_doi":"","prc_seo_data":{"title":"Obama job rating flat after midterm losses, unlike Bush, Ike, Truman","description":"President Obama\u2019s approval rating has barely moved in over a year and remains at 43%. In fact, the share of Americans approving of Obama has wavered between 41% and 45% in 13 consecutive Pew Research surveys dating back to September 2013.","og_title":"Obama job rating flat after midterm losses, unlike Bush, Ike, Truman","og_description":"President Obama\u2019s approval rating has barely moved in over a year and remains at 43%. In fact, the share of Americans approving of Obama has wavered between 41% and 45% in 13 consecutive Pew Research surveys dating back to September 2013.","schema_type":"Article","noindex":false,"canonical_url":"","primary_terms":[],"custom_schema":[],"og_image":25830,"indexnow_submitted_at":null,"gsc_index_status":null},"prepublish_checks":{},"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"relatedPostsOrdered":[],"bylinesOrdered":[{"key":"c4fd21c0d29ec42ce62a5bdc3a00f8a0","termId":754}],"acknowledgementsOrdered":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read\/13837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/short-read"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13837"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read\/13837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103489,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read\/13837\/revisions\/103489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13837"},{"taxonomy":"bylines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bylines?post=13837"},{"taxonomy":"collection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection?post=13837"},{"taxonomy":"datasets","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/datasets?post=13837"},{"taxonomy":"_post_visibility","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_post_visibility?post=13837"},{"taxonomy":"formats","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/formats?post=13837"},{"taxonomy":"_fund_pool","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_fund_pool?post=13837"},{"taxonomy":"languages","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/languages?post=13837"},{"taxonomy":"regions-countries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions-countries?post=13837"},{"taxonomy":"research-teams","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-teams?post=13837"},{"taxonomy":"workflow-status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/workflow-status?post=13837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}